Under the rain of gods entirely grim
View(s):There is a Latin palindrome which intrigues me. It is SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS. Read front to back or back to front, it offers the same conundrum. And if you arrange the words in a five-by-five squared letter graphic, the same statement poses its enigmatic message from top to bottom and bottom to top in addition.
Its origins and significance are shrouded in classical antiquity. Its meaning and pertinence were hotly debated over the centuries. The one I favour is that the sower (sator) holds (tenet) the works (opera) and wheels (rotas) by means of water (arepus, from the second declension of arepo). That interpretation has sprung to mind several times over the past week or so and more. Water, water, everywhere! Delaying the works of human hands and the wheels of humanity’s heavily mechanized lives…
Oh, dry up!
On a wet and windy weekend away in rain-soaked Sabaragamuwa, the head of modern trade at a multinational company doing business in our once sunny island painted a somewhat murky picture of these ground realities as his company experiences it. It rains, he observed, quite heavily this time of year. This year, he continued, it has rained harder and more heavily than last. (There is no hiding the truth from these captains of commerce, is there?) When it rains hard, like it has done, depressions form everywhere. In the Bay of Bengal, over the Blessed Isle’s blue skies, in the dulled Brain of the Buyer. Fast-Moving Consumer Goods are among the first to feel the pressure from this atmospheric fallout. It’s wet, so people don’t want to go ‘marketing’ (as it is called).
When they do, they don’t buy toiletries like soap (for e.g.), because once back home and dry they don’t want to bathe or can’t do so as often as before. Brr, that nip in the air – innit? Ladies are loathe to powder and/or make-up their pretty countenances – face it, girls! Laundry doesn’t dry as rapidly as under a tropical sun, so homemakers put off this chore. Detergent stacks the shelves. Roads get flooded, un-bypass-able highways see goods-laden trucks get bogged down. Products don’t reach the periphery. Sales plummet with the barometer. Marketers bite their nails. Managing directors of FMCG Cos. feel the pinch. Farmers feel the sting of the rain on their backs, crops, harvests, livelihoods, futures. Less inclined to work, the wheels of agriculture grind down slowly. Water would be fun if it wasn’t so wet and the weather so windy.
The ones that didn’t get away…
The fun and frolic received a painful jab in the solar plexus when the bodies began floating ashore. They were the bloated corpses of dead fishermen, bobbing in the incoming tide. A bleak morning it was for me at Bambalapitiya as I parked along Marine Drive and joined the throng of curious and excitable passersby.
These unfortunate few had been caught unawares by the gale-force winds and compelled to offer their lives to appease the storm. Or so the critics by the coastal railway tracks said to one another as they waited for the authorities to arrive and take charge of the bodies. No one would dare touch the cadavers for fear of suspicion of foul play. One couldn’t help thinking that there had been foul play all right – The culprits were warming their seats many safe leagues away… and, having been caught napping again, were now scratching their heads in bemusement as to what excuses to furnish this time round.
This was not the first time that the Met Dept had failed to issue the much needed storm warning well in time. It was not the first time that search and rescue operations in the aftermath of cyclonic weather patterns had foundered in the choppy seas of bureaucracy and ineptitude, and sunk to the bottom of the Indian Ocean in a floundering of human misery and needless sacrifice. And it will not be the last time that the ultimate responsibility for these national maritime tragedies are passed from the upper echelons of state to the lower decks of naval, coastguard, and air-sea ops.
The bottom line
It is probable that cyclones will continue to compromise the safety of fishermen in particular but also farmers, factory-workers, and many families across our island in the future as well. The blame game may take its stormy course, but many issues remain unresolved…
To wit:
Is the Met Dept adequately equipped technologically to monitor rapidly developing low-pressure systems around Sri Lanka? Is it modern enough? Are there enough suitably qualified meteorologists on the beat at all times? Are early warning systems backed up by adequate communications systems to get the storm warnings out on time to people in the paths of hurricanes?
Could the recent disaster off our shores have been predicted more accurately, pre-empted through dissemination of information more efficiently, and managed more dynamically through better contingency planning and implementation of vital early warning systems?
In the wake of typhoons, are air-sea search and rescue operations ready, willing, and able to scout and mount contingency measures in a meaningful and equitable manner, island-wide, and not merely in areas of high media visibility or socio-political importance?
Can we rely on the government’s response (such as independent investigations into whether the Met Dept was fully equipped to issue early warnings about the cyclone) to implement adequate measures conducive to better early warning systems and concomitant disaster preparedness?
Is the typical knee-jerk reflex of an administration caught off guard – again – a sign of more inclement weather to come? Is there ongoing institutional weakness in a monsoon-lashed ministry’s administrative structure?
It is an irony that our government, keen on and demonstrably good at hard infrastructure development, appears to have missed the boat in terms of protecting one of its key assets – people. No amount of wishful thinking about reversing the brain drain of qualified meteorologists will gainsay Sri Lanka’s abysmal performance at cyclone-warning and disaster-management procedure.
I’m at my wit’s end about what has happened yet again; and so would you be too if you had your works and wheels stopped for life by water, water, everywhere.
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